Brewery Establishes A Partnership With Community College's Work-force Development Center

April 23, 2006|By VICTOR REKLAITIS, vrek@dailypress.com | 223-5682

JAMES CITY — As more of its skilled workers retire, the Anheuser-Busch brewery in the Williamsburg area needs to get more strategic in its workforce development, according to the brewery's plant manager.

With that in mind, the brewery has forged a new partnership with Thomas Nelson Community College for a "Maintenance Technician Development Program."

"The most difficult person to find in American industry right now -- and it's no different for us -- is the high-skilled maintenance technician," said Brian McNelis, the plant manager. Across the country, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has predicted a shortfall of about 10 million skilled workers by 2010.

The new program will begin in August with a handful of Anheuser-Busch workers, said Mac McGinty, Thomas Nelson's associate vice president for business development and corporate training. Training will take place mostly at the college's Peninsula Workforce Development Center in Hampton, but also at the brewery in James City County.

Thomas Nelson has developed similar programs with other companies on the Peninsula, including Northrop Grumman Newport News. McGinty said Anheuser-Busch also has similar programs at several of its other breweries across the country.

McNelis said some of the local brewery's employees have worked there since it opened in 1972, and they're starting to retire. This also means the plant is hiring right now.

"We are hiring a slow, steady trickle (that) we need to do to just keep up with attrition," McNelis said.

The brewery is one of the highest-paying employers of hourly workers in Hampton Roads. In recent years, Anheuser-Busch officials have said the average pay is about $24 an hour, but the company no longer releases that rate.

In the 1990s, the brewery's personnel chief even said he was concealing what he did for a living in social situations because people were cornering him to angle for a job. Currently, the brewery employs about 900 people. *